stats

I think i'm going to stay on the aciphex but also add tagamet back in. Aciphex is a proton pump inhibitor and tagamet is an H2 (histamine) blocker. So that makes sense.... (And Dr. Obnoxious prescribing me two different proton pump drugs at once, I think, did not make sense.) I don't see anything against it (though I'll keep looking).

Also -- from reading a bunch of stuff online and in harrison's it seems fairly clear that gastritis / ulcers don't get better very fast and I should not be expecting to feel better in just 2 weeks. (Which no one made clear.)

I realize that I didn't really say anything about taking a lot of NSAIDs ... on and off for many years but often very heavy use... er, why did i not mention it?

It might not be unreasonable to try the food allergy elimination diet plan, but it is so tedious. And it has to be done right (i.e. scientific and consistent) or it is pointless. But in the meantime no sources can agree on what "easily digestible" foods ARE. and... I assume it is a bit like asthma ... if I'm already irritated then the slightest thing sets it off but then when I'm more or less better I can wear hair gel or use smelly soap and it doesn't bother the asthma. It could be similar with food.

Okay I am going to make a huge effort to stop talking about all this. I have promised everyone that I will rest a lot, make room for naps while at my conference, will eat carefully as I can, and... basically will NOT "run on adrenaline" full speed ahead and then come home and collapse. So, take it for granted that I am boringly agonizing about what to eat, and what not, and whether I'm doing something to damage myself, and wishing I weren't in pain, wondering if I'm crazy: and that I have made an attitude adjustment that for the next few weeks I am slowing myself down etc etc etc.

And yes, I am paranoid that I will "rest" too much and exacerbate other health problems - it is best for me if I keep up as high of a level of physical activity as possible. So though I will be resting or whatver I will try to take a 20-30 minute walk or a bike ride every day. and THEN nap. that's the plan, anyway...you can stop laughing now... Really no one should be laughing as you consider the way I have been springing lightly to the top of long staircases on purpose and ignoring elevators after years of feeble breathless limping.

Instead you should feel sorry for whatever is making my stomach hurt because I'm going to KICK ITS ASS.

I got up early, slipped out to Copymat, and finished my translation zine before 10am. There's parts of it I'm not happy with, but it's not bad. Tomorrow I'll fold and staple a bunch of them to take to the conference.

I wish I had just had the pages be white instead of cream-colored... it looks kind of stupid. Oh well!

I had to redo the cover - a drag - I didn't have time to make it nice - so it's very zineish and crappity.

And did you know that 8.5 x 14 paper is going the way of the dinosaur? Just try to find any nice paper in that size - I dare you.

Anyway now I've had some soup and some jello. I'm lying down. I'm not so lightheaded. Soon I'll pass out again.

I'm very spaced out and sort of trembly. I slept all afternoon. Dazed. Weird dreams about falling asleep and then people waking me up and making me go somewhere else, where I'd fall asleep again.

So nothing very conclusive from the endoscopy but "gastritis" and they took some biopsies to try to figure out the cause of it, I guess.

i put on a cowboy shirt and hat to go to Moomin's halloween party, and went, but 15 minutes later was desperate to go home, my legs are all wobbly and i think my mouth was hanging open. All I wanted to do was put my head in Jo's lap and close my eyes. Rook drove me home. I'll eat some soup and go back to sleep.

I was very scared of the endoscopy but either it wasn't too bad or else I just forgot the entire thing. My mind is a blank after the floaty-feeling hit, but I know I must have been conscious and cooperating the whole time, like a zombie. This freaks me out and seems sad, like being in a science fiction story where you split into two people and then have to merge personalities again which means that one of the divergant personalities dies. Since none of us remember everything anyway, this happens all the time. But it's freakier when you're on a gurney.

Oh yeah and I had one of the most incompetent IV-putter-inners in the history of the world. I could hear her in the next curtained partition before me, saying "oops!" cheerily and "your veins are just all dried UP!" to her hapless victim. When she got to me I showed her how my veins are plump and juicy and a phlebotomist's dream. Despite her chirpy act she had no sense of humor and looked at me as if I were insane! And then she stabbed around in the back of my hand for like 5 minutes going, "it's THERE, but it's like, curling AWAY from me every time I... Oops!" So I ended up with the catheter in the crook of my elbow, she made it hurt like a bitch...

Oh yeah, I remember telling Molly the much nicer nurse in the "procedure room" that I was unduly terrified... and chirpy-bitch stuck her head in to say "You're gonna love it, the drugs are great" and then Molly said some comforting things and assured me she would narrate everything. "There is no such thing as too much information, just tell me everything even if I'm a zombie please." She said she would. And then she said if I had a ring in my eyebrow surely I could deal with endoscopy and I said "Hahaha, sure, I gave birth with no anesthesia so how hard could this be?" and blacked out.

Soooo... does anyone without children in tow want to drive me to Blatherton and pick me up? 11:30am tomorrow and... I just want someone who is a calming sort of person, without children, to be there to hold my hand or whatever while I come out of anesthesia. It's kind of heavy duty and might last a couple of hours for me to come round enough to leave, but the actual procedure is supposed to take only 10-15 minutes.

A while ago on the way back from dropping Moomin off at his play date at Zian's house... We saw Jo outside the church and slowed down. I hooted "heeeeyyyy baby!" out the window and considered yelling "I hear Unitarian chicks are eaaasy!" but as some blue-haired ladies were already recoiling in horror... we just drove off.

Oh the scandal!

I was telling Cally, Zian's mom, about the green jellyfish alien in the Dr. Who episode about the Whore of Fang Rock and how the alien was going, I will CONQUER EARTH" or whatever, and she blurted out, "Oh my GOD! That's IT! Bush is secretly a green slimy glowing jellyfish alien." And then Zian crawled beneath a pile of fiberglass insulation that was ready to be hauled to the dump and she was like, "UM. yeah. hahahaha. Honey, would you mind covering up the pots of nuclear waste we have in the back yard?" We bantered in a lively manner about the pirahna petting zoo and alien invaders. They're really nice!

Now I am listening to a giant CD of stuff C. made for me and downloading more stuff by anyone who takes my fancy. You really should buy Millie Jackson's album "Live and Uncensored" if only to hear her sing "Lick it Before You Stick It" and "I had to say it". Very amusing! If you have a low sense of humor like I do.

I had a cosy evening... it improved my mood a lot to dress Rook up like Joan Jett and send him off to Madeline's Dead Rock Stars party. I mean who would not cheer up at getting to use one's little-known skills -- If anyone knows how to put on slutty stoner chick eyeliner like it's 1982, it's me -- I was not one, but I learned from a master. (Thanks Julie.)

Chula came over to watch dr. who and blake's 7. alas that last episode of blake's 7 was incredibly dumb!!! It was the one with the pink-haired chick and her pink-haired samurai space pirate dad! GAH. Oh Avon, how low you have fallen in my esteem. I will always remember you the other way, with the understated sneering of a criminal mastermind, instead of the smirk of a grotesque poser!

After going back to the city on the train C. called me at 1:30am to say she had been hit by a van, a hit and run, but she is okay except for bruising I guess and the cop was brutal and stupid and accusatory, treating her like a lying crack-addled hooker. she went to the ER, they said she would be okay but stiff and bruised etc. and i hope they catch that hit and run fuckhead, who was probably drunk, and i hope the cop catches some hell also for being an asshole and traumatizing her...

Moomin woke up about every half hour all night and came to ask me random questions like "Do otters eat only fish?" and "Will you cuddle me?" I could not figure out what the hell was up with him. His allergies were super bad, so possibly he just kept waking up with a stuffy nose.

I ate a cookie and some warm milk... I feel almost normal! Except anything warm or cold that I eat hurts a lot. The other pain has calmed down ... Maybe that means it's all ulcers and it's getting better.

Yesterday afternoon I cried all over Rook ... I freaked out a little bit on-blog but what I was really feeling was a million times worse. I suddenly felt that I had no one to tell the depth of the horribleness. And was like "Rook, I am actually a pathetic loser. And you are totally deluded. And I'm just probably making myself sick in some mysterious neurotic way, because I was happy and must always sabotage my own happiness and success before i actually accomplish anything, because I'm fucked up. " He reassured me this was not true, and later I also confessed this terrible feeling to C. who mentioned that she and Rook are both quite intelligent and I should trust their judgement that I'm actually nice, sane, and loveable. This was even more reassuring. And then I kind of remembered that every single time I'm sick, even just with a cold or a mild sore throat that might be a cold or might be post-nasal drip, I skate around the edge of this very same tailspin of self-doubt and loathing. But, that doesn't mean that SOMEDAY IT MIGHT TURN OUT TO BE TRUE. Also, I realize on some level that my believing that I can magically think myself into being not-sick, is a symptom of my monstrous ego in that I think I am the center of the entire universe and can control it. Ha...

Then I read this novel by Denise Mina - and I loved "Garnethill" very much - but I did not love "Deception" since all the people in it were assholes and the main plot "twist" was OMG THEY'RE LESBIANS. Don't you hate that? Like in "psion" or was it the other Joan Vinge novel where the thing that lets the hero know that the villain is the villain is that... *gasp* she has some leather s/m sex toys under her bed, so... obviously she is an evil sadist capable of the worst crimes against humanity? And in Deception it's all about the "I never in a million years would have guessed she was an evil/foolish lesbian!" Er. How dull! I could sort of follow the double identity plot but it was sprung without much warning right near the end... and it was lame.

I'm going to have some soup... Moomin has a playdate... maybe I can go to kinkos and finish my translation magazine layout and then go to the nice independent copy store to print it... I need 200 copies minimum. I only have maybe 50 left from the first issue which was 400 copies.

I had a nice day lying around and pottering but I can't even begin to express my bitterness that I have not been able to do the things I want to be doing. I am missing tagcamp, not working on my thesis, not ready for my conference, translations I wanted to read are unfinished, poems that are rocketing around in my head are unwritten. Stuff is happening all around and I am not part of it. I am coming unhinged. I keep thinking maybe today will be different and then it isn't. Monday I will be having gross endoscopy and will feel like crap. Tues. I hope I will recover from that and I still have the vague dream that I might get my translation of Perlongher together somehow (tomorrow??) AND finish composite #2 which I guess should be the priority. Since I can read some other perlongher or some of my other translation at the conference. Which suddenly feels like a huge waste of time and money anyway. and all the joy is sucked out of getting to gallivant around montreal if I can't even gallivant properly but instead will be shuffling around drearily and collapsing into armchairs trying not to look ill.

Meanwhile, half of me is still convinced that by sheer effort of will I could feel better if only I would cheer up.

The latest Tamora Pierce fantasy novel, "The Will of the Empress" has teenage lesbians. Oh, so deliciously mary-sue-ish in all the best ways!

It's like Andre Norton, but with good writing! Magic teenagers who are so powerful with a new kind of magic that no one understands them! Rah! Most other people have some boring kind of magic but they have Ambient Magic, and draw power from their surroundings, like Brian Eno. They earned their magic PhDs at age 13, and people just keep underestimating them. Will people ever learn?

The red-haired fat nerdy bookreading one with weather magic and scrying and lightning in her braid... and her own miniature, slightly naughty glass dragon as her pet...The black one who is a smith and a gypsy sort-of-outcast and she can like, send her consciousness into volcanoes, and has a hand made of "living metal" and is totally lesbonic...The perky petulant snub-nosed blond one who is noble and an heiress and has "thread magic" and keeps making her enemies' clothes fall off...And the token boy who used to be a "street urchin" who has plant magic and has a telepathic pet bonsai tree that's also his magic power battery and flowers love him and he has vine tattooes all over his hands and arms...

When they stand together nothing can stop them!

Oh yeah - and they all have Magic PTSD. And there is a Feminist Message.

Ahahahaha! Juicylicious! I hope Tamora Pierce lives forever!

Thanks for lending it to me, Cyn... Now I have an excuse go back and read the other ones in the "Circle of Magic" series.

I ate bread and cheese last night - and this morning, corn muffins. A lot of nausea, some pain, still exhausted -- but really --- not as much pain. maybe the ulcer meds are working?? getting better? Hmmm!